Google is gonna trick out a select few cities with Gigabit Fiber! To the whole community! WHOA! Sign ME Up!

"Google is planning to launch an experiment that we hope will make Internet access better and faster for everyone. We plan to test ultra-high speed broadband networks in one or more trial locations across the country. Our networks will deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today, over 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We'll offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people"

I don't see how they are going to afford it. If laying fiber optic cable all over the place all the way to homes was cost effective, all the cable companies would have done so already. They haven't, and the reasons are economics and cost of repair when Joe Homeowner puts a shovel through the fiber when planting a petunia.

The other reason, especially in Florida, why this might not be such an affordable service is the law that requires all power poles be hardened (for hurricanes). The cost of this is passed on in shared fashion by anyone who attaches to them. In some communities that already have the phone company, a cable company, and a telco like Sprint or equivalent on the poles, there is no space left for another company to hang cable. That means they'd have to bury it, and that is VERY expensive, especially for fiber.

So they might be able to do it, but I don't see how they could possibly sell the service for anything that resembles a current cost of broadband internet service. Maybe 4 times that.

During the last year, Verizon dug up most of the central area and buried fiber. Its NOT hooked up yet in the building I am in downtown, but I have a new 'stub' box on the back of the building. (We did get an offer for an all inclusive service @ about $160/mo per hookup) The local counties already have the Verizon FIOS Home service, although I don't know if its all buried or not. (I passed on it - I have Comcast on coax)

As for the Google Deal, its subsidized -- Google is coughing up for it as an experiment. kewl, huh?

Subsidized? By Google? That would be experimental cash I suppose, but I'm not sure why they would do it.

The cost of laying fiber in that manner is expensive. If they're talking about servicing something like to every home in a neighborhood, they would have to be talking huge fiber cables, like maybe running 4 or 5 196-ct cables. That would be... roughly about $33 per linear foot of cable. Then there is the labor to put it in. Not counting permits and all the Federal and State DOT surveys required, just to put in the conduit and pull the cable (purchased above) through it, on average, in Florida, is maybe $3,200 for a 500' run.

That's $730,752 per mile of major run. Then into a neighborhood with 1 cable, maybe 1/4 of that per mile.

And they are going to sell that service for what a cable or phone company charges? Ain't no way.

Also, where are they going to get all the interface equipment to provide this service? The ones used now in businesses are not cheap; I don't imagine you'd be renting them at the same fee you pay the cable company for a modem.

There are only two federal government subsidy programs; one is for telephone to remote areas, that under the Federal Telecommunications Act only AT&T/Bells qualify for. The other is for power grid distribution lines, which fiber optic is not.Congress is considering a program for broadband to remote areas, something that would mirror the telephone program, but no one yet knows how they intend to pay for it. Probably with another tax on phone or cable bills.

The Sprint run is common in telecom outfits... that is, run fiber to major downtown areas where the expectation there will be enough business customers (who pay much more than residential) to generate the revenue to return on the investment of laying all that fiber. Also, by being the first to lay in a business zone, it creates opportunities to lease fibers to other companies (competitors) because it's cheaper to lease something installed a couple years ago than it is to lay your own in the ground today. It also sets up opportunities for reciprocal use agreements. That's where, say, Sprint is run to the downtown, but Comcast fiber is run to the shopping mall. Sprint has a customer in the mall that wants Sprint service, and Comcast has a bank downtown that wants Comcast service... so they lease each other a couple tubes of each other's fiber for the exact same rate.

How will they decide where to deploy?Nobody knows but Google, but we believe it will be based on three major factors. 1) How much "dark" fiber is available for them to buy or lease 2) How easy it will be to work with local municipalities and 3) Community demand and support for the project.

Well that explains some of how they plan to keep costs under control. But I have to imagine that any existing fiber belonging to a competitor that may lose customer share to such an initiative will not be sold, only rented at top dollar. Imagine asking the phone company to lease a bunch of phone lines so you can sell phone service at $1/customer? Think they'd lease a bunch to you? Think you'd get a nice discount?

#2 is very interesting. I read it as code for how willing is the municipality to skip over the normal franchise processes and do most or all of Google's negotiation with local power companies for them. Not to mention a very friendly code enforcement and permitting process.

#3 seems to me to be the deciding factor once hurdle #2 is jumped. Unless they get a commitment, it just isn't cost effective to build that kind of network, even for an experiment. It seems like they're trying to get a foot in the door and then let the word spread about how fast it is - but all of that is really meaningless without a price tag. You can get a direct fiber connection from any of 3-5 companies in Florida right now, thing is you have to pay for it. I cannot even conceive even Google having a way to lease lines and undercut the competition in price. Those things are negotiated long before the first byte of laser-powered data flows down the pipes.

Our whole counties have Verizon FIOS other than some extremely rural areas now (down here as noted in map pic). So Verizon has already jumped that cost hurdle. I'm not saying they are profitable yet, but just about any residence can have FIOS right now. In fact, Verizon rolled out the Home service first. The business districts' installs came after residential.

Personally (as a systems engineer) I never bought into that 'dark fiber' comment. IMO I think Google wants to build their own network. The 'nomination' form details an incredible amount of consumer attitude surveying. The only way to determine feasibility in a new-to-you field is to run a pilot project.

Google has also diddled with city wifi and Wi-max previously and owns a Wi-max broadband operator; Clearwire.

Verizon and Sprint, and to a limited extent some of the other cell site operator/owners are in a unique position to lay all of that fiber. Without boring you silly with the details, portions of that fiber are second-layer lay ins, which means, basically, this:

The first time they built the cell towers, they installed enough fiber to carry the signals they needed and only a bit extra, for redundancy, emergencies, and customers fat with cash who wanted a tube or two. But the FCC's rules changed several years ago, mandating that any public network that wanted to has the right to demand co-location access, which is a direct tie-in to another company's network. That means, for example, Comcast doesn't have to route all it's traffic to the net, and the net route it to ATT's network (assuming that's the destination). Comcast can ask for and receive a place to install a fiber link and run fiber that will feed traffic to ATT directly by light rather than by wire, significantly reducing net traffic and greatly increasing speed.

All the big companies do this... they all colocate with each other. It wasn't well received at first, but now everyone is used to it and we all benefit from it.

Back to Sprint et al: Because of this colocation thing, companies got the bright idea that colocation could mean hanging equipment on a cell phone tower. Things like microwave transmitters that could beam a signal across a bay for 1/20th the cost of laying fiber either under or around the bay. The cell phone tower operator/owners smelled blood in the water (cash, actually) and immediately embarked on a project to lay fiber outward in a few directions from cell phone towers to major business centers and other potential "interests."

Many of these big-time fiber users do not rely on ONE fiber, some have a "ring" type system that will automatically switch if one leg gets cut, sort of like how ancient network architecture worked. Others use two or more redundant paths. Refer to my above post about reciprocal agreements with fiber and you end up with what you have now. A whole bunch of Sprint's traffic is carried on other people's fiber, and a bunch of other people's optic data is carried over Sprint fiber. Just fill in the names of any two biggies and that's what you have today.

Like anything else, the first guy in something new is always best positioned to expand it, so in Sprint's case, the revenue they generated was smartly reinvested to lay more fiber. Being they've done this over a decade and a half, they now have significant amounts of it in the ground, while others like Southern Light, are gaining. ATT hasn't laid much because they've been focused on fiber for their video/Uverse project, and that has sucked up all the money able for fiber.

Many of the FL cities (especially the ones down your way, JonB) are getting away from just letting everyone and their brother lay cable wherever and are going toward better municipal planning things where this kind of stuff is planned and contracted. It's enormous money... imagine getting the contract to lay all the fiber in South Miami. This is one reason, I'm certain, Google is putting such emphasis on local government cooperation. They won't want to be forced into dealing with exclusive regional carriers.

Oh... also the feds and the FL legislature change their minds on all this about every 11 minutes. So it's not like you can make a long term plan and expect things to be the same a year from now.

I had forgotten your job, LOL. That part about the cell towers giving a few providers a big leg up makes total sense. Oddly enough I kinda knew that , but wasn't thinking about it actively. My ex S.O. and her ex-husband owned a tower certification operation. LOL the 90's were berry berry good to them...

Well much of what these companies are finding out is that people don't really sit back and examine subscriber-level service from an engineering perspective as they believed they would.

You can offer someone 10GB/s throughput, up or down, but if it isn't competitive with the $19.95 deal for 3 months (that gives you 12MBps down, 2MBps up), then Joe Websurfer isn't going to shell out $65 month when his needs are met with $20.

Bigger, or faster, in this case, isn't always better. The economy being what it is, people are looking for ways to trim the fat off their utility bills, and giga speed when you only need mega speed is one of them.

These kinds of projects are capital projects, meaning in order to get your investors/stockholders to approve the plan, you have to show a way for all those dollars spent to come back to you (in revenue income) within some specific time frame.. maybe 3 years, maybe 5 years, maybe 7 years. So they are stuck having spent the money and now can't demand the pricing structure that would return their capital investment in the allotted time. This means much extra costs in terms of refinancing loans to extend the term. The interest on these kinds of loans is huge because the loans are backed with something that ain't and hopefully, someday will be. One competitor showing up in the marketplace with a product that makes it obsolete means, for that business:

1) They will lose market share, not gain it2) They can't repay the loan except out of funds that would otherwise go to investors (i.e.- profits)3) While their competitors build up their new product, they are stuck paying off a dead loan and have no capital with which to build something that can compete.

Now you understand why all these execs make most of their money not in salary, but in things like stock options. That way their pay is directly linked to how well they read the crystal ball.

And you can also see why they aren't about to sell their dark fiber (unused fiber lines) to Google for anything less than top dollar.

What I think this is really about - and this is just my own speculation - is Google having an eye on providing a coast-to-coast internet provider service. They want to become what AOL was when the internet first took off. Probably 7 out of 10 users subscribed through AOL until they realized it was overpriced and underperformed, then they went local and got better deals.

I think Google wants to get a foot in the door and start a public relations blitz that will make everyone want what they have to offer. This will have influence on local and state franchise regulators and everyone up to the FCC. Then communities will fall all over themselves to let Google do what they want, and likely, like AOL, when the demand exceeds what they can deliver, many won't like what they get. It always seems to happen that way.

Remember Google is primarily a marketer, an advertising service, that provided free search capability highly stacked in favor of it's own clients. The one thing is doesn't have is subscriber data... your personal info, DOB, SSN, address, phone, etc. If they can get that via the service provider method, it only takes one little paragraph in fine print to allow them to use your data to more specifically target you for the products of their clients.

im on Virgin Media's 50Mbps if the 100Mbps out at the end of the year will my cost go down? time to see

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